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Employment Relations Act 2000

Collective bargaining - Collective agreements

51: Ratification of collective agreement

You could also call this:

“Employees must agree before the union can sign a new work agreement or make changes to an existing one”

When a union wants to make a new agreement with employers or change an existing one, they need to follow some important steps. You need to know that the union can’t just sign the agreement right away. They have to get approval from the workers who will be affected by it first.

At the start of talks about a new agreement or changes to an old one, the union has to tell the other side (usually the employers) how they’re going to check if the workers agree. This process of getting workers to agree is called ‘ratification’.

The union must follow the ratification process they’ve told the other side about. They can only sign the agreement after the workers have approved it through this process. This rule makes sure that the workers have a say in their work agreements and that the union is representing what the workers actually want.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM59112.

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Part 5 Collective bargaining
Collective agreements

51Ratification of collective agreement

  1. A union must not sign a collective agreement or a variation of it unless the agreement or variation has been ratified in accordance with the ratification procedure notified under subsection (2).

  2. At the beginning of bargaining for a collective agreement or a variation of it, a union must notify the other intended party or parties to the collective agreement of the procedure for ratification by the employees to be bound by it that must be complied with before the union may sign the collective agreement or variation of it.